Indian Premier League 2019: Pitch will be the cynosure as Super Kings take on Royals

It will be a contest between Rajasthan’s formidable batting line-up versus a spin-heavy CSK bowling.

Seasoned campaigner: Harbhajan Singh's experience has been to the fore for Chennai Super Kings.

Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, going into their third match of IPL-12 at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium here on Sunday, have had contrasting starts with two wins and two losses respectively. 

However, more than the two teams, it will be the pitch that will be watched closely after the season opener between the home team and Royal Challengers Bangalore came under criticism for the slow nature of the wicket that heavily assisted the spinners. Sunday’s match, though, will be played on a different pitch.

The defending champion has largely been untested in both its games and the team’s bowling performance has helped set the match up for the batsmen. 

In both games, CSK’s spinners did the heavy lifting on friendly wickets, though pacers Deepak Chahar and Dwayne Bravo too did their bit against Delhi Capitals. With the bat, Shane Watson looked good setting up the chase before Kedar Jadhav and M.S. Dhoni got the job done.

Chennai Super Kings captain M.S. Dhoni with his teammates during a practice session ahead of the IPL match against Rajasthan Royals in Chennai.

 

Willey pulls out

Ahead of Sunday’s match, the home team received another blow with Englishman David Willey pulling out of the tournament for personal reasons. The team had already lost South African pacer Lungi Ngidi to injury and will be replaced by New Zealand all-rounder Scott Kuggeleijn who will join the side next week.

On the other side, Royals has lost both its matches despite doing largely well for most parts against Kings XI Punjab and Sunrisers Hyderabad. 

Failing to capitalise

In the first match, lost in the din of R. Ashwin’s controversial run out of Jos Buttler, the team failed to capitalise on the start given by the Englishman, despite having the likes of Ben Stokes and Steve Smith in the line-up.

On Friday, though Royals scored 198, riding on Sanju Samson’s ton, David Warner blunted its bowling attack. 

However, a good thing for Royals is that it has the batting firepower to inflict some damage on the CSK bowling and the team. In the end, the match will boil down to how the Royals batsmen perform against CSK’s spinners.

Teams (from):

Chennai Super Kings: MS Dhoni (captain & WK), Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, Shane Watson, Faf du Plessis, Murali Vijay, Kedar Jadhav, Sam Billings, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Shorey, Chaitanya Bishnoi, Rituraj Gaikwad, Dwayne Bravo, Karn Sharma, Imran Tahir, Harbhajan Singh, Mitchell Santner, Shardul Thakur, Mohit Sharma, K M Asif, David Willey, Deepak Chahar, N Jagadeesan (wk).

Rajasthan Royals: Ajinkya Rahane (C), Steve Smith, Ben Stokes, Jofra Archer, Jos Buttler, Ashton Turner, Ish Sodhi, Oshane Thomas, Liam Livingstone, Sanju Samson, Shubham Ranjane, Stuart Binny, Shreyas Gopal, Sudhesan Midhun, Jaydev Unadkat, Prashant Chopra, Mahipal Lomror, Aryaman Birla, Riyan Parag, Dhawal Kulkarni, Krishnappa Gowtham, Varun Aaron, Shashank Singh, Manan Vohra, Rahul Tripathi.

Match starts at 8pm (IST).